by John Benteen
Toward dawn they hit the Samalayuca desert. It was a desolate place of pure sand, rolling dunes.
Later, they ate a cold meal, wolfing to get it down before the blowing, omnipresent sand made it inedible. Meredith tossed his bean can away. “We’re making good time. This rate, tomorrow we might hit Jose Ortega y Leon’s hacienda. Don Jose’ll know what the situation to the south is.” He pulled his neckerchief back up over his face. “Funny, though. We haven’t seen much in the way of revolutionaries. When I made my way through a few weeks ago, the whole country was swarming with ‘em.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Fargo said. “Something’s drawn ‘em off. They’ve been gathered in, somewhere, maybe for an offensive. We don’t want to get overconfident. If that’s the case, if and when we do run into ‘em, it’s liable to be one hell of a big bunch of ‘em. Okay, Meredith. You knock off some shuteye. I’ll keep first watch again.”
Meredith bent his head against the blowing sand. “You think we need to keep guard here? I thought you said it was safe.”
“Safe as any place,” said Fargo. “But no place is safe when everybody in camp’s sound asleep.” He took his binoculars, his rifle, and mounted the dune.
Up there, he burrowed down. There was nothing he could do about the perpetually blasting sand, so he endured it without thought, ignored it. Instead, he kept busy scanning the horizon. Nothing showed, though, and he thought about Meredith.
The big man was a good traveler. He was tough, hard, like Tess had said. What complaining he did came more from lack of practice at playing second fiddle to anyone, taking anyone’s orders; he was used to being top dog. The sort of man who, when he saw something he wanted, took it.
Fargo thought about the job ahead of him. A quarter of a million in silver. That was one hell of a lot of mule loads; roughly seven tons of the white metal. It was going to be a big string to bring across three hundred miles of war torn country—that, plus a woman.
Fargo found himself wondering about the woman, Crystal Delaney. She must, he decided, be a real dog, ugly as a wagon-yard hooker. Only a woman with no other choice, faced with being an old maid, would condemn herself to living in a howling wilderness like the Sierra Madre. Fargo formed a picture of her in his mind; like a schoolteacher he’d once had—dried up, breastless. He supposed Meredith thought of her as quite a woman because she was long-enduring. Then he quit thinking about her, because that made him think of Tess Kendall, and thinking about Tess Kendall took his mind off his work.
The day dwindled away in blowing sand. They rode at nightfall. Presently, they were out of the Samalyuca, edging into sparsely grassed range country. They had to stop for a while, let the horses graze and drink from a muddy spring. There were cattle tracks around the spring. Fargo kept close guard while they were there; in this country, water drew people.
They went on. Meredith kneed his horse up alongside Fargo’s. “We ought to be on Ortega’s range by now. If we ride hard, maybe we can make the hacienda by dawn.”
“It’s worth a try,” Fargo said. “Lead the way.”
Meredith rode ahead, at a high lope. Fargo followed, leading the pack mule. The country had a roll to it, one swelling rise after another. They kept to the low places, to avoid being skylined. Fargo twisted constantly in the saddle, looking to left, right, behind.
They had traveled five miles and another dawn was coming when Fargo saw them.
He saw the high, conical peaks of their sombreros, the broad brims. He saw the barrels of rifles. He saw their reined-in horses curvet, sidle, fiddle-foot. He had time for just that much of a glimpse of them. Then, as he brutally slammed spurs to the bay, the shooting began.
Fargo caught up with Meredith. “That hacienda!” he yelled. “How far?”
Meredith was leaning behind his racing mount’s neck. He pointed. “Maybe two miles!” he bawled.
“It’s our only chance! Ride like hell!”
Beside him, almost knee to knee, Meredith rode like a centaur, swung low, lashing his horse. His chestnut was giving all it had, flecks of foam whipping, hooves thundering, nostrils flaring. So was Fargo’s bay. The pack mule was a shade slower; and now the riders were closing from behind and on the side as well. Fargo made his decision, dropped the mule lead rope. Either it kept up or it didn’t. But now the hacienda’s great, square, whitewashed walls were looming closer; Fargo could see the huge wooden gates. They were barred. And if Don Jose Ortega y Leon didn’t give the order to open them…
Then they cracked a bit. And at that instant, the thunder of rifle fire that shook the morning doubled. Guns flashed all along the top of the hacienda walls, blazed from the blockhouse. More than that—Fargo heard something that made him give a wild, roaring whoop. From every blockhouse came a steady, business-like chatter, like an obligation to the ragged rifle-sound. Machine guns! “By God!” Fargo yelled, “he’s got machine guns!”
Behind him, there was shouting, hollering. He twisted, saw the pursuing bandidos reining in short. He could hear the whistle of the machine gun slugs over his head; covering fire: they didn’t like it, not a bit! He saw men pitch from saddles. Then they were milling, trying to turn, and still the machine guns chattered on.
Out on the plain, the other revolutionaries were taking fire, too. Their dust cloud slowed, churned. And now the hacienda gates were only three hundred yards, two, one
Then Fargo and Meredith were thundering through. The pack mule made it, too, just before the massive gates swung shut behind them.
The horses plunged on across a huge yard that had once been landscaped; beneath pepper trees there were even fountains, benches. But now the place was jammed with people, livestock: bawling oxen, braying mules, screaming women, crying children. Fargo and Meredith managed to check the horses just before they plunged into, trampled, that milling, terrified throng. Gasping, ribcage heaving, Fargo’s bay dropped its head.
Fargo jumped off, looked around. Up on the walls, riflemen lined a fire step. The machine guns were still chattering from the blockhouses. Then Fargo’s attention was riveted to a tall man in rich, black charro clothes. His leonine head was shagged with iron-gray hair, his jaw with a heavy beard that matched it. He strode back and forth on the fire step like a general, waving a long saber.
Even as Fargo stared, he turned, came nimbly down a ladder. The throng made way for him, as he marched toward where Fargo and Meredith leaned against their mounts, trying to draw breath. As he approached, Fargo saw a stern, handsome face, cold gray eyes above a nose like the beak of an eagle. The old caballero sheathed his sword in a silver-mounted scabbard. Then ‘he halted, bowed low from the waist. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in Spanish touched with Castilian lisp, “I am glad you have had a safe arrival. I am Don Jose Ortega y Leon, at your service. My poor house is yours.”
Chapter Four
Meredith shoved back his hat and let out a long breath. “Poor house or not, Don Jose, I’m sure glad to see it. Those wolves out there nearly had us.”
“Yes,” Don Jose said. “You and your friend—” He looked inquiringly at Fargo, who told his name “—you and your friend came at a very dangerous time. We have been under siege for the past four days. You were fortunate to get through. Those dogs—” his lip curled “—dogs, you understand, not wolves, began to gather into a pack then, and they have howled at us ever since.” He glanced significantly at the blockhouses, where the machine guns were still spattering short bursts. “We have been giving them what dogs deserve.”
“Villa?” Fargo asked.
“One of his detached bands. Led by a man named Pablo Garcia. A peasant swine, formerly of this hacienda. Now he calls himself a coronel.” Don Jose sniffed. “He is supposed to command this district. One of these days I shall take him, hang him up by his thumbs and have him horsewhipped, as I have done before when he was a trouble-making peon. Meanwhile, let him come and come again; the more often he does, the more men he loses to my machine guns. Fortunately they got here from
Mexico City just in time. Now, you gentlemen have had a strenuous morning. Perhaps you would like refreshment? I’ll have your horses seen to. Tonio!” He snapped an order; a boy came and took the horses. The firing from the wall was dying now, indication that the attackers had retreated out of range. Fargo and Meredith followed the old man through the mob of refugees who had come in from the outlying pueblos, picking their way carefully over and through the pitiful stacks of personal possessions.
The area enclosed by the hacienda walls was enormous; the walls themselves thick as those of a fortress. Obviously this place had been built at least a century before, maybe earlier than that; and it had been well-designed for the use to which it was now being put. Ahead, Fargo saw the house itself, huge, sprawling, with arcades and courts and grilled windows, its roofs of red tiles glittering in the sun.
The firing had nearly stopped. “The rabble always attack at dawn,” said Don Jose, “and always we repel them. You had the misfortune to ride right into the center of their attack. Things will be quiet for a while now, and your breakfast will be undisturbed.” He led them to a pleasant shady patio in an inner court, where a table already had been spread. His orders to a servant were terse, curt. “I am a widower, as you know, Senor Meredith. My daughter and I always breakfast together. She will join us shortly. How are Senor Delaney and his wife?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith said, sitting in the chair to which the ranchero gestured. “Haven’t seen them in weeks. I been up in the States, tending to business. Trying to get back to the mine now.”
“Ah, a very tricky, dangerous business in these times. But I see you have brought along your own army to help you.” He smiled, his eyes running over Fargo’s weapon-draped body.
“Fargo’s a good fightin’ man,” Meredith said, drinking coffee greedily.
“Yes…Yes, I have been thinking…I have heard the name. Vera Cruz, was it not? And then… in Panama, also, I believe?” Don Jose looked thoughtful, “You would perhaps know something of the operation of machine guns?”
“A little,” Fargo said. “What kind have you got?”
“Lewis guns. Ten of them. And a very great deal of ammunition. As you know, they use much ammunition.”
“Yes,” Fargo said. “The way your men were firing them, they do. You’ll ruin the barrels, too, holding the triggers the way they do. Short bursts, always short bursts.”
“Ah?” Ortega’s gray brows went up. “You would perhaps, while you are here, demonstrate, teach my men?”
“Sure,” Fargo said. “We can’t leave until those revolutionaries give up anyhow.” He turned to Meredith. “This is why we didn’t run into more trouble on the way. They were all gathered here for the attack.”
“Si,” said Don Jose. “The dogs hate me bitterly. They want my land, they say, to divide among them. The great Ortega y Leon grant divided among a bunch of louse-ridden Indios, can you imagine? Well, they shall not have it. If I take Garcia, I’ll have him skinned alive. I mean it. Just as he would do to me if he got his hands on me. Revolution, they call it! I call it banditry, and—” He broke off, suddenly getting to his feet. “Ah, good morning, my dear! Senores, allow me to present my daughter Juanita. My dear, Senor Meredith—whom I believe you know—and this is Senor Fargo.”
Fargo stared at the girl.
She was tall, slender, yet with magnificent breasts beneath the tight bodice of her black dress. Her hair was the color of a raven’s wing, her skin pale as ivory, her eyes enormous and black, her features cleanly chiseled, almost like the profile on a cameo. For just a moment, her eyes touched his, ranged over his array of weapons; then they shifted away modestly. Her acknowledgment of the introductions was a shy murmur. Then she sat, and, as was the custom in the presence of men, remained silent.
Food came. Don Jose, despite the army outside his walls, ate leisurely and with gusto. There were only a few scattered shots now. “They hate me,” he went on, “because I rule in the old way. I am the father, these—” his hand indicated the people within his gates “—are the children. Too much is not good for children, and when they are wicked, children must be sternly punished. Those, too, are my rules; the old rules. Very well, I am not loved; I am feared; that is even better....”
Fargo hardly listened to him. It was a tune he had heard before, the one that precipitated revolution after revolution all over Latin America. He ate with appetite; and another appetite was stirring in him, too; he could not keep from glancing covertly at the girl. Covertly, because the women of a Spanish household were sacrosanct; the least display of interest in or familiarity with them and a stranger was in serious trouble. Nevertheless, he found that each time his eyes flicked toward her, her own were on him. As soon as their gazes met, she always looked down promptly, modestly, at her plate; yet, before the meal was over, Fargo sensed a kind of electric current arcing between them.
He was not surprised. The girl was shut up here like a prisoner. And at twenty, twenty-one, whatever her age, the juices were at full surge within her. Warning himself to watch his step, Fargo tried to keep his eyes off her, but it was impossible.
As her father related the story of Pablo Garcia, how Garcia had been careless with a mule, injuring it, how he had been strung up and horsewhipped to teach him a lesson, the very skin flayed from his back, Fargo saw in her eyes what could only be revulsion—and, he realized suddenly, hatred. It came to him all at once that Ortega y Leon was no less strict, no less brutal, toward her than toward his other “children.”
Presently, the meal was finished. Don Jose stood up. “Now, my dear,” he said to Juanita, “if you’ll excuse us. Senores, will you come to the walls with me?”
Fargo and Meredith followed him. Once, Fargo looked back over his shoulder, and the girl at the patio table still had her eyes on him. Fargo smiled faintly and thrust a cigar between his teeth. Then he gave his full attention to the hidalgo.
They mounted to the fire step of the great walls, manned heavily with vaqueros armed, Fargo noted, with excellent Springfield rifles; apparently Don Jose had spared no expense in equipping what amounted to a private army. The men bowed respectfully to their patron as he passed. But, with sudden foreboding, Fargo saw something else in their faces. He was a step behind Ortega, and he saw the change in their expressions. First, humility; then, behind Ortega’s back almost the duplicate of the look he had seen on the face of Ortega’s daughter—disgust, resentment, hatred…Fargo felt a little, instinctive prickle of the hair on the back of his neck. They were not, he thought, as safe here as it seemed.
“You see,” Don Jose said. “The cowards have already retired. And—” there was grim humor in his voice “—not without losses.”
Fargo looked out at the shimmering, sun-baked plain beyond the wall. Here and there were dark blots that were dead men, dead horses. Far away, at the very limit of effective rifle fire, the attackers had regrouped. Fargo un-slung his binoculars, focused them. Wounded were being treated; there seemed to be general confusion in the ranks. A knot of men in the forefront, dismounted, were conferring. One of them, tall, thick-shouldered, slung with bandoliers, seemed to be the leader. He wore a high-crowned sombrero richly trimmed with gold.
“The one in the Dorado sombrero,” Fargo said, “is Garcia?”
“Yes. He was a member once of Villa’s Dorados, his personal bodyguard.”
Fargo squinted at the vultures, already circling in the merciless, cloudless blue. “You’ve hurt them pretty bad this morning, looks like.”
“Yes. But they will come again. And we shall hurt them again. We shall keep hurting them until they go away. Now, the machine guns....”
He led them into an abode blockhouse at the corner of the wall. Tired-looking men with the broad, flat faces of Indians sat at two Lewis guns, one pointed north, the other east They were under command of one of Ortega’s Spanish major-domos. The floor was littered with empty brass—far too much of it, Fargo thought; they had been wasting ammunition. The fields of fire were g
ood, though. Interlocking. He stripped one of the guns; not ruined yet. He put it back together deftly, checked the inventory of ammunition drums. He traversed, elevated and depressed the gun on its bipod, made an adjustment or two. “Let me see you fire,” he commanded the gunners.
As he had expected, when they opened up on the distant band of Mexicans, the gunner fired not in bursts but by ripping through a drum in one long, continuous hammering, holding the trigger back without let up. The bipod not tightly held, crept.
“No,” Fargo said. The rounds had fallen far short. “Like this. See?” He gave Meredith instructions, and the big man lay on his belly and held the bipod. Fargo sat behind the gun, raised it very high. He fired in short, effective bursts. The bullets dropped in among the men thousands of yards away out there and sent them scattering. Don Jose crowed. “Marvelous! You will instruct all my gunners?”
“Yes,” Fargo said.
With Don Jose following, always at his shoulder, he spent the morning doing that. He liked machineguns; it felt good to be working with them again. Twice more, as the attackers tried to regroup, he broke them up with unexpected bursts. They’d had a false conception of the range of the Lewis guns; now they learned its true effectiveness.
Then it was siesta time. Down here, even war stopped for that. Fargo and Meredith were led, after a light meal, into the cool depths of the huge, richly furnished house, Each was given a small bedroom on the second floor, furnished in European luxury.
Fargo closed the heavy oaken door and stripped off his gear gratefully. He was tired, ready for some rest. He took off his clothes, washed off days of trail dirt, found a bottle of tequila in his belongings and had a couple of hefty snorts, chasing them with cool water. He lay down on the bed, let his muscles go loose. But his brain would not follow suit; something nagged at him: the expressions on the faces of Don Jose’s fighting men when they looked at their patron. The set up here looked sound, but something was rotten at the core; and he had a fair idea of what. Morale. Ortega was commanding these men to die for him. Men would not give their lives for another unless they loved him, admired him. Fargo did not think Ortega was either loved or admired by his ‘children.’ He thought Ortega was hated. Ortega’s men would fight to save themselves, so long as they believed that Garcia’s band would slaughter them if Garcia won. But if Garcia were clever, he would slip word inside the walls somehow and let it spread. He would promise the defenders amnesty, perhaps a share in the spoils. And if he did that— Well, it might not be Garcia who wound up being skinned alive....
